to keep posted on the work of agents who may be engaged a thousand miles, or more, away. In the anteroom where visitors wait to be admitted to the Director's presence the most compelling decorative object is a startling white plaster facsimile of John Dillinger's death mask. It stares, empty-eyed, from under the glass of an exhibit case. There are other exhibit cases in the anteroom, but this one, like a prize scalp, is significantly located closest to the Director's office. Grouped about the mask are souvenirs of the memorable night when the spectacular outlaw was cornered and shot down after he had emerged from a motion- picture theatre in Chicago. There are the straw hat he was wearing, a wrin- kled snapshot of a girl which was fished from his trousers pocket, and the sil- ver-rimmed glasses he was wearing to heighten his disguise, one of the lens rims snapped by a hullet. There is a La Corona-Belvedere cigar he was car- rying in his shirt pocket that summer night, still banded and wrapped in cel- lophane. As for the other cases, the waiting visi- ..... tor with a craving for second-hand thrills may hover over such items as a red wig taken from a felon named W 001- ridge who vainly tried to disguise himself from the G-men; a .30-cal- ibre Browning auto- matic rifle which was fa vored by the late Clyde Barrow, and miscellaneous subma- chine guns, revolvers, automatics, knives, and other deadly weapons once carried by crimin- als. The most ghastly exhibit is a black hood and a part of the rope used to hang one Carl Panzram, an obscure hoodlum who is vague- ly described, on a hand- lettered card alongside, as one who committed murder on government property. There is an almost unholy shriek of triumph in these stark, simple objects. A visitor who finds all this too macabre or repulsive may cross the room to a rev01 ving rack and thumb through the originals of more than a hundred news- paper cartoons which glorify the dar- ing and unerringness of the G-men. The impression of infallibility is drummed even more vigorously into those who make the regular tour. The tourists are taken first into the Director's anteroom. This is as close as they get to the Director's physical presence unless they happen to be distinguished visitors. The latter get a special audience. Af- ter the ordinary tourists hå ve probed all the shivery possibilities of the anteroom, they are led through a series of other rooms in which are displayed an even greater variety of confiscated armament and forbidding mementos of episodes in which the law overtook the outlaw. There are also exhibits of devilishly cun- ning scientific crime traps into which kidnappers, bank robbers, and murder- ers have stumbled, and two more fac- similes of the Dillinger death mask. The mask apparently is a sort of Kaiser's mustache with the F.B.I. A tourist is dull-witted if he fails to apprehend, as he gapes at the display cases, that he is looking upon the rude implements and superstitious talismans of a barbarous """... ........:..':.::;. : :: ø : ,,'. -,"'..... ": ( - :. 21 race that is slowly perishing under the relentless impact of a superior one. Men in shirtsleeves, plump house- wives, school children-the whole motley, curious, patriotic crowd of Washington vacationists-gasp in open astonishment as the tour leader, with a fine feeling for dramatic suspense, tells how the G-men trail malefactors and close in on them. He uses specific cases which are ,veIl known to newspaper readers, and he is aided in getting over his message by elaborately prepared maps and charts, on which the action is indicated by blinking lights. The tour- ists exclaim, "Marvellous!" and "How in the world do these crooks expect to get away with it?" and the tour lead- er replies that there is nothing magic about it; just brains, science, and team- work. The tourists also get the impression that the F.B.I. has been responsible for the solution of most of the recent major crimes. In dilating upon the Lindbergh case, for example, the tour leader tells h " " I d . d d . ow we so ve Jt, an lrects atten- tion to a large map of New \7ork City on which the G-men, using colored pins, :o')-'...... : ^. .......... , . .,s r _V' j . '.<y' '. Ii 'f ". iii I. !W 'if' " f ; , $: , .';;''; .... ,. - ': t} , - ji' \ , /" ': <:": :'}{:;;. . / . . - :' ':r;,. ' '.. ,t,,=-.;'=". - .,.'.J', .- ".;" :-:.:. .,;.. : , :,{. $;. f'... . t' I III i;, ! '::: ::::: ":1; !t}' ;t :/ 11 :!ii ,-." ' ;:I :; ,I :ý}: ::E::::"; " fi", ..,.:: : '''''. t .' <'.: i ....... ..1 l... 'J .. ß .': i!::,] ì - ø -, . . ... ". i i.,: · . '.. : "...":r .,. .. . '\. ,. . .... , ' . .. , . _ ; . M : ê : ! . . ,. , , , : " . . : , ; . . _: ... : _ ; F . , . j;í'^ ;;.__it. L; > :., ;', ïJ-": . . "H old everything, Mrs. Estabrook! Our new Paris cable has just arrived."